The White House is the hope of Executive
Director John Dewitt of the Save-the-Red
woods League. Last November he appealed to
President Bush to declare the sequoia groves a
national monument. John's letter reminded
the President that he would be following a
precedent that created Muir Woods National
Monument in 1908. That action came from
Theodore Roosevelt, whom Mr. Bush quoted
at a recent ceremony: "A grove of giant Red
woods and Sequoias should be kept just as we
keep a great and beautiful cathedral."
I met John Dewitt as I explored the fate of
the sequoias' sister trees. The coastal red
woods, not as massive but with a greater reach
for the sky, easily qualify as the world's tallest
living things. Given centuries to adolesce, they
may top 350 feet, swaying masterpieces of
richest color and flawless grain. And that is
part of their trouble.
"As timber the redwood is too good to live,"
John Muir said almost a century ago, and
Old-Growth Forests:Will We Save Our Own?
he was uttering prophecy. By that time we
already had Yosemite and Sequoia National
Parks to protect stands of the sequoia, but not
one acre of coastal redwoods then enjoyed
such protection, state or federal. Mostly for a
price of around $2.50 an acre, the redwood
lands had all passed from public domain to pri
vate hands, from near Monterey, south of San
Francisco, for some 400 miles northward into
Oregon. Cathedral groves fell before the fierce
energy of antlike men and straining mules.
Growing naturally only in a coastal band lim
ited by the inland reach of wet maritime mists,
"the glory of the Coast Range," as Muir
described the trees, began to suffer a diminu
tion that continues today.
Our beachhead against an ultimate wipe
out is a string of state parks, largely the 70
year achievement of the Save-the-Redwoods
League, and Redwood National Park, mid
wifed by the National Geographic Society.
The park, born in (Continuedon page 122)
Stripped to the shoreline, gullied slopes of Mount Paxton shock visitors to Vancouver
Island on Canada's Pacific coast. Slides, silting, and loss ofground cover penalize wildlife
and fish on the 280-mile-long island, where only a fourth of the originalforest survives and
controversy flares over corrective logging policies. Slash fire (below) on private land in
Washington removes logging debris but pollutes air and robs soil of enriching wood decay.